


Hair

by buttsonthebeach



Series: Jaal x Sara [4]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Interspecies Relationship(s), Jaal POV, One Shot, Post-Game, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 07:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11248842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttsonthebeach/pseuds/buttsonthebeach
Summary: "Jaal was admittedly… fascinated by Sara’s hair."Or, some random fluff and introspection about Jaal's attraction to Sara's alienness, and his determination to make sure she has little luxuries.





	Hair

**Author's Note:**

> I owe this one shot to my husband, for coming home today with argan oil shampoo, calling it “angaran oil shampoo” by accident, watching me dissolve into a fit of laughter, and then coming up with the entire concept for this fic on the spot and demanding that I write it. I'm just happy he finally came up with a fic prompt that doesn’t involve me killing one of my characters (or writing a PeeBee/Jaal/Ryder threesome and calling it "PB&J Sandwich") :)
> 
> This is the same Sara and Jaal as my other fics, but you don’t need to read those to read this. This is post-game, so there are spoilers (though they aren’t a main focus) for the ending mentioned in one line.

Jaal was admittedly… fascinated by Sara’s hair.

Although, the word Lathoul used was “obsessed.”

“You spent the first two minutes describing her only talking about this… hair. That’s obsession,” his brother said when he protested.

Maybe Lathoul was right.

He thought about the comment off and on after that, when Sara took her helmet off and shook out the brown locks, or when she walked down the hall from the shower and the strands hung down in dark wet clumps. Or, best of all, those rare occasions when she kept it down all day and it hung around her face, and _swayed_ as she moved. Why was it a source of such fascination for him? Perhaps because it was one of the most visible signs of her alienness, of the fact that she was so utterly different from him, and yet she looked at him like he was the one who arranged every star in the heavens.

He’d been searching his whole life for a sense of belonging, for mystery and adventure, and he’d found all of that with her. He thought of that every time he brushed the back of his hand along the silken strands, or ran his fingers through them, or buried his nose against her hair and breathed in deep.

So, given his… fascination, it was no surprise that he was the first one who noticed the change in Sara’s hair.

It had been almost a year since they met, and suddenly the hair he’d known was not quite as soft or smooth. It became fuzzy in a way that was not entirely unpleasant, but made Sara sigh and try in vain to flatten it. Frizz, she called it, a delightful word that made her stick her tongue between her teeth and buzz with the last consonant. She seemed less delighted by it. He also noticed that it no longer smelled the same - it had lost its beguiling floral scent for something decidedly… bland. Flat.

“It’s the shampoo,” Sara sighed.

“The special hair soap you use in the shower,” he said, thinking back to the times he’d been in the communal bathroom with human teammates.

“Yeah… Vetra had a contact that had really nice shampoos and conditioners that they managed to sneak to Andromeda, but the supply has run out at this point. I’m back to the standard issue crap now. And, as you have no doubt noticed, it is not doing my hair any favors,” she huffed and ran her hand through it again. “Maybe I’ll just cut it all off. It is getting kind of long…”

“No!” He said, and then winced at the panic in his tone. “That is - it is your body, taoshay, but I do… appreciate it, this way.”

Sara laughed and took his hand. “I know you like it. I bet you’d like it if I grew it all the way to my waist.”

A shocked sound escaped Jaal. He’d yet to see a human with hair that went much past their shoulders. “It gets so long?”

“It would, if I let it grow for a long time. It would take years though. And it wouldn’t fit in my helmet, and it would be a hazard in battles...”

Jaal couldn’t deny the surge in his bioelectrics at the thought, the hum of excitement trapped just under his skin. Not just the idea of so much hair, the way he could wind all of it up in his hands, feel it against his skin when he held her, but the idea of years together - of a world where she didn’t have to put on that helmet and go out into that danger.

“Anyway,” she said. “I can’t grow it out if it’s going to be so frizzy and annoying. I hope Vetra finds a new supplier soon.”

Another surge of excitement.

“Is there not a solution a bit closer to home?” He said, his mind already  making and rejecting combinations. _Something for softness, like what I put in the lotion for my neck - but also a cleaning agent - the plant we use on Havarl may be too harsh - perhaps the pulp I can sometimes buy on Aya… and I need to learn how it makes those bubbles, and whether or not that’s an essential part of the process..._

“Oh,” Sara said, picking up on his thoughts. “I mean - angara don’t have hair so I didn’t think you would know how to make shampoo.”

“Do you have so little faith in your darling one?” he scoffed. “Give me a bottle of this trash that the Initiative is giving you, and I will find a solution.”

He didn’t have as much time to dedicate to the project as he would like - even with the Archon defeated and Port Meridian growing steadily, there was seemingly no rest for them - but he still found moments to steal away and analyze the chemical make-up of the Initiative-brand shampoo. He went through several versions of his own recipe, each time giving them to Suvi and Cora (and then Liam and Gil, when they protested the special treatment) for testing. Sometimes when he sat in the tech lab working on it, he got to thinking about the last year of his life. A year ago he hadn’t even known a thing such as hair existed. Now he was frowning over the consistency and properties of a special hair soap for the woman who held his entire heart in her small, many-fingered hands.

It wasn’t such a surprise, in the end. He’d always been looking to distant stars and to the depths of how things worked. It made sense that his taoshay was someone who pushed him to reevaluate, to think, to change, to grow, to seek new knowledge. Her face was framed by uncountable strands of hair and not by smooth, sloping muscles, but when he presented her with the new bottle of shampoo she shrieked and the sound made everything in him sing, and in the end wasn’t that all he needed? To smile when she came bounding back from the shower, ecstatic over the scents he’d used? To run his fingers through it when it dried and feel that alien softness and think _here I am home_?

“You do such nice things for me,” Sara sighed later. “I wish there was something I could do for you.”

“I have some ideas,” he grinned, his voice rumbling in the way he knew she loved.

“Stop that, you,” she said, swatting his shoulder. “I mean… I just wish there was a gesture I could make in return.”

And here was another thing that reassured him, no matter how different they were: how right it felt to bolster her in these moments of doubt and insecurity that stole over her so often when they were alone.

“You do so much for so many,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “Let me do this small thing for you.”

If there was one downside to Sara’s hair, it was the way it tickled when she put her head on his shoulder that night in bed. Or the way his current made several of the strands stand straight up in the air, which was amusing, but rather distracting. But it did mean he was awake to watch her sleep - or so he thought.

“You do have one problem now,” she mumbled.

“And what is that?”

“Liam and Cora and Suvi and Gil are all demanding their own tailor-made shampoos. Apparently you spoiled them with the prototypes.”

He laughed. “That is an honor and a challenge, not a problem.”

“Maybe that’s what we’ll do after all of this,” she sighed, burrowing closer. “You can run a shampoo store. And I’ll be your model.”

It didn’t matter so much, Jaal decided, if her hair tickled. Not when he could fall asleep already dreaming of the world _after all of this_.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this random little fic! This will end up being a companion piece to a fic set around this same timeframe in Sara’s POV, reflecting on the first year of their relationship (with some NSFW content). Now that it’s summer and I am almost done with my ongoing DA:I fic, I will have more time to work on it! If there’s anything else you’d like to see, I am always open for prompts and ideas :)


End file.
